Chapter Outline I. Human Evolution
A. Homo habilis
1. “Handy”
2. Created and used stone hand axes.
3. Lived 2.5 mya B. Homo erectus
1. Stood and walked upright
2. Carved flint into symmetrical shapes for use as tools, weapons
3. Lived 2.5 mya C. Homo ergaster
1. “Workman”
2. Stacked bones of dead
3. Lived 800,000 years ago D. Australopithecines
1. Lived earlier than genus homo
2. Before Lucy, were thought to be clearly subhuman
3. Lucy
a. Lived 3 mya
b. 3 feet tall, but bipedal and lived in family E. Homo neanderthalensis
1. First discovered in Neander Valley in Germany
2. Died out 30,000 years ago
3. Coexisted with Homo sapiens for 100,000 years
4. As big as sapiens with larger brain
5. Had human-like traits
a. Cared for old and sick
b. Buried dead—suggestion of religion F. Homo floresiensis
1. Discovered in Indonesia in 2004
2. Small brains and bodies, but with evidence of tool making
3. Lived 18,000 years ago
II. Out of Africa A. African Eve
1. Last common ancestor
2. Lived 150,000 years ago
3. One of about 20,000 Homo sapiens living at the time B. Migration
1. Humans began to migrate out of Africa about 100,000 years ago
a. Went to many different climates that forced adaptation
b. Arrived in Middle East 100,000 years ago
c. Colony failed, but was reestablished 60,000 years ago
d. In China 67,000 years ago
e. Arrived in Australia 50,000 years ago
f. Arrived in North America 15,000 years ago I. Migration, Population, and Social change A. Migration: Changed size, organization of groups, people’s views of the world, and interaction with surrounding species.
1. Moved on foot and lived by foraging.
2. Children were unsuitable for foraging life due to mothers’ lack of ability to carry more than one or two infants at once.
3. Migrants limited their families to make traveling easier. (Methods mentioned under population) B. Population: Regulation of who can mate with whom.
1. Main contraceptive method is a long period of lactation. (Breast feeding keeps woman relatively infertile)
2. Also Food shortages, ecological disasters, plague, and war.
3. Cooking with fire helped migrants digest food better because of humans’ short guts, weak jaws, blunt teeth, and one stomach. There were wider ranges of food was major evolutionary advantage.
4. Paleoanthropologist R. Wrangham argued the evolving shape of hominid teeth (blunter, and smaller) is a result of the use of food modified by flames. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Abbe Henri Breuil said the humans back then “knew the use of fire.”
5. New and improved technologies improved diet, and hunting skills.
6. Warfare was thought to have been evolution implanting aggressive and violent instincts in humans, and by romantics an invention. First evidence of large-scale warfare was the battle at Jebel Sahab. Similar warfare conflicts amongst the chimpanzees. C. Social Change: Men have enhanced roles in societies of enhanced violence
1. Human males along with other primates are bigger and stronger than female primates. Women; however, are considered more valuable due to their bodily cycles and rhythms.
2. Theories of male domination in societies are the competitiveness and the desire to command control of elementary of resources. Another theory is male dominance thought of being the consequence of hunting.
3. Men did hunting women gathered. II. The Last Great Ice Age
A. Homo Sapiens experienced the most convulsive period of climatic change.
1. Every 100,000 years or so there is a distortion in Earth’s orbit. The great cooling began 150,000 years ago.
2. Europe was tundra, and there was steppe that was on the shores of the Mediterranean.
3. Warming began 18,000 yrs. ago. Melting ice and cooling seas began due to the warming. Thus our world map.
III. Ice-Age Hunters
Hunters enjoyed the edge of the ice. Hunters seek animal fat for a good energy source.
New technologies such as bow and arrows helped kill, arctic hares, and horses, mammoths, elephants, deer. Climate change also killed these animals.
Artwork shows of a fat female. Fat was beautiful.
Ice age communities consumed about 5 pounds of food a day. Fruits were starchy grains, fruit, wild tubers, and meat.
Ice-Age affluence. People could observe nature. The Flinstones.
Map light blue is extent of ice cover 20,000 yrs. ago Germany, Russia, Sweden. Purple is tundras in Eurasia. Steppes in Spain and through the Himalayas
I. Ice Age Art
a. Prehistoric art was found in caves in North Spain, southwest France, Great Britain, Ukraine, and the Ural Mountains between Europe and Asia. The art was mostly paintings, especially of animals, but also sculptures, carvings, and other forms of art.
b. Ice Age art was used for magic rituals and told stories. It is also a belief that the art was used to track prey because artists of the Ice Age made images of hoof shapes, tracks, habits of season, dung, and desired food of the animals they ate.
c. The artists who painted animal portraits were practiced from learning through generations of skilled painters. They used palettes mixed with red, brown, and yellow ochre. II. Ice Age Culture and Society
a. Globalization, where cultural elements were alike everywhere in the inhabited world, was last practiced during the Ice Age era. For example, people used similar types of technology for hunting and gathering, ate similar food, possibly practiced similar religions, and enjoyed similar material culture.
b. Material culture is the concrete objects humans make. Archeologists and historians can infer what people’s religious, political, natural and societal attitudes or values were like based on food, clothing, and home decorations. For example, mammoth hunters built dome- shaped homes from mammoth bones. Communites had less than 100 people because daily activities went on inside these dwellings.
c. Historians can find information about Ice Age people’s symbolic systems, magic, and social and political units based on realistic drawings, numeric marks, and calendars with crescents and circles like those of the phases of the moon. Carvings and paintings show important people in animal masks who were possibly shamans talking with the dead or gods.
d. Red ochre was used in burials and possibly as body paint. It was also for magic. Leaders in society were distinguished from boyhood (maybe birth) because of elaborate ornamentaion of bodies of prominent figures at burials.
e. Feasts were most likely for alliances and strengthening communities to become more powerful. III. Peopling the New World
a. Hunters crossed a link no longer existent between North America and Asia and spread over the hemisphere hunting and sometimes causing extinction of the abundant game. The Clovis people were the American pioneers.
b. With widespread evidence and with a broad range of cultural diversity, it is a conclusion of some historians that colonists came at different points in history and brought other cultures.
c. The American hemisphere was lived in around 13,000 B.C.E. when glaciers covered most of North America. When the New World was populated remains in question because archaeologists have found evidence in not only the eastern United States but also in southern Chile that is estimated to be 12,500 years old. It could have taken thousands of years to get to Chile, so historians wonder when people first came to the New World. IV. Survival of the Foragers
a. The Inuit from North America made a soapstone lamp full of blubber 4,000 years ago which enabled them to follow game past the tundra. Foragers lived in new environments such as deciduous forests, areas with lakes, prairies and even tropical forests when the climate changed. Some foraging groups lived in the desert where they had to make collaborative networks (people married outside their community and provided hospitality to visitors) and orally transmitted science (people provided information about their habitat in order to survive in it.)
b. San or Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa gather vegetation such as tubers with water and cacti and hunt game to get water. They are persistent when hunting game because of invested emotion through the generations. V. In Perspective: After the Ice
a. After the Ice Age, people chose farming or herding over foraging. Although most people chose a new way of life, some such as the Inuit still live according to tradition.
Chapter Chronology
ID Terms
1. Evolution
According to Merriam-Webster, is “a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state.” Evolution is key to understanding the roots of the human race because it perfectly illustrates the idea that there is no set time when humans came into existence, rather that we were constantly undergoing evolution to become the race we recognize as human beings today. In addition to the idea of our roots, evolution helps us understand the world more clearly because our race has encountered and adapted to it for over 100,000 years.
2. Anthropology
The theology dealing with the origin, nature, and destiny of human beings, has a sub group called paleoanthropology, the branch of anthropology dealing with fossil humanoids. The study of fossils has helped us understand our species’ history by allowing us to see the structures of species very close to ours from 100,00 to 6,000,000 years ago. Paleoanthropology reinforces the idea that humankind has evolved from creatures millions of years ago and didn’t just appear.
3. Lucy
Discovered by the archaeologist Dan Johansen in 1974, is an australopithecine (”southern ape-like creature”) that has been dead for over 3,000,000 years. Although she was only about three feet tall, Lucy and the rest of her species exhibited traits that were thought to be unique to a later species of Homo. Lucy walked on two legs and lived in a family setting. Tools thought to be 2.5 million years old were also found at the site of Lucy’s discovery. Footprints from 3.7 years ago were found a year later. Lucy’s discovery has a historical relevance similar to that of evolution and paleoanthropology, which is the inevitable truth that humans have ancestors millions of years old and have been, and will be, constantly evolving. 4) Homo Sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) Homo sapiens is the scientific term for the species to which contemporary humans belong, translating to mean “wise human.” The neanderthal is a humanlike species, evidence for whose existence was found in the Neander River valley in northern Germany. It disappeared from the evolutionary record around 30,000 years ago. There are many similarities between the species both at the physical and in the level of intelligence. They followed the same hunting and foraging patterns, they made the same tools our ancestors made, and lived in the same kind of society, with similar customs and rites. Because of Neanderthals, the line between what is considered human and what is not has become exceedingly blurred. MA 5) Homo Sapiens‘ migrations and peopling of the world
Paleo-anthropological evidence first places Homo Sapiens in East Africa at around 150,000 years ago. From there it took the early humans around 50,000 years to move out of Africa and into West Asia, but these early settlements failed. Homo Sapiens pushed on peopling what is now modern day China about 60,000 years ago. 67,000 years ago, humans returned to West Asia. Australia was conquered by Homo Sapiens around 50,000, surprisingly enough, before Europe which was populated 10,000 years later. As the Americas are the least accessible landmasses from Africa, they were colonized a mere 15,000 years ago. MA 6) Human migration and population boom –> key factors?
The reasons behind the population boom and migration of Homo Sapiens are complex subjects, but you can probably boil it down to a few key factors that set these events off. Having the ability to control fire gave early Homo Sapiens control over the grazing of animals and, therefore, a basic control over their food supply. They were able to improve their hunting, using fire-hardened spears, which improved their diet. Using fire to cook increased the digestibility of food, increasing the range of edible foods. All of these examples are important factors in the growth of the population. You must look at the issue of human migration from a different angle. Migrations tend to be forced on a population, and new problems have likely been introduced into the population’s environment causing them to want to move away. War, diseases, or natural disasters are the likely culprits. Food shortages are another good example, but this does not fit with the idea that the population increased during the migration
7. War- natural human tendency or cultural invention?
Armesto provides both sides viewpoints (natural tendency and cultural invention) on war in the textbook. Armesto seems to support the idea of war as a cultural invention. He seems to put it down as a result of ‘male dominance’ in ape societies, and relating this to humans (since our societies are related in this way). Armesto argues that this male dominance occurred because of the way the hunters (the males) would distribute meat they had taken in the hunts. This can be considered as a cultural development.
8. Venus of Willendorf and Venus of Laussel
The Venus of Willendorf is a carving of a plump female created 30,000 years ago, named for the place in Germany where it was found. The Venus of Laussel is very similar. It too depicts a plump female, and was created more than 20,000 years ago. It was found in France. Both of these carvings show that Ice Age peoples held body fat in high esteem. It shows that they enjoyed revelry and that women had an involvement in ’sacred activity.’ They also show that there were accomplished artists during this time period.
9. Ice Age affluence
This is a term Armesto uses to describe the abundance of game and other food, and the long hours of leisure time that people in the Ice Age enjoyed. These things allowed them to really observe and think about nature. This allowed their art and culture to flourish.
10. Material Culture –> insights it provides into Ice-Age society and culture?
Armesto defines material culture as “concrete objects people create.” These material items help people to “make informed inferences,” for example, we can use items left behind to determine what people ate, what they believed, and how they lived their day to day lives. Items left behind are not the only way to determine how people lived, but symbols and art are also helpful. Drawings and paintings on caves show traditions, rituals, and even calendars from 30,000 years ago.
11. Ice-Age Religious Belief System/Shaman
A shaman, according to Amesto, is “someone who acts as an intermediary between humans and spirits or gods.” Groups could designate elites in their societies to communicate with the dead or gods. This person was able to connect those on earth to spirits and could also communicate with an animal by disguising as that certain animal. The shamans held power and respect in groups and were crucial to the Ice-Age people’s way of life.
12. Foraging Peoples (e.g. San/Bushmen)
The San or Bushmen have inhabited southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert for about 14,000 years. These people have practically lived the same way since their first occupancy. There is little water there, so they rely on tubers and cacti for liquid and “30 percent of their sustenance.” They also hunt game on foot for a complete day, and can “run for twelve miles without stopping.” This is how the San or Bushman have lived for thousands of years and Armesto puts it that “as difficult as it may be for use to understand, the San would find it heart-wrenching to change a way of life for the mere sake of efficiency, convenience, or material gain.”
1.) What methods or approaches do paleo-anthropologists and anthropologists use that differ from those of historians?
- Intro
- Approaches historians use
- Approaches anthropologists use
- Identify points of comparison such as tools used, time periods they study etc.
- Synthesize response structure around points of comparison
2.) What are the fundamental differences and overlaps between Homo Sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis?
- Intro
- Characteristics of Homo Sapiens
- Characteristics of Homo neanderthalensis
- Talk about similarities and differences in diet, vocals, and lifestyle etc.
- Conclusion
3.) How does the disagreement/debate over what ancestors do or do not constitute fully “human” reveal contemporary attitudes and rifts?
- Intro
- Identify ancestors that were humanlike according to historians
- Identify ancestors that were not humanlike according to historians
- Identify points of disagreement
- How does this reveal contemporary attitudes and drifts
- Conclusion
4.) How does the tension and deep-seated conflict created over the issue of evolution reveal some of the methodological rifts between history and other disciplines?
- Intro
- State in general the theory of evolution
- Say why this topic brings about conflict
- How does this conflict reveal faults between history and other disciplines
- Conclusion
5.) How does Fernández-Armesto’s description of humans throughout the chapter (e.g on p. 9 “In this environment…”particular kind of habitat”; p. 14 “Creatures like us…”) reflect a different treatment and tone toward humans than the one typically found in history texts (and popular culture)?
- Intro
- State in general the typical tone towards humans in other texts and why this is so common
- State Armesto’s view of humans
- Provide insight as to why Armesto describes humans like this
- Conclusion
6.) What drove the great human migrations and how did this great migration of Homo Sapiens change the way in which human societies expanded, interacted with one another, and defined gender roles?
What was the great human migration?
How were societies and people affected?
How did they interact?
What were the defined gender roles?
Opening
Societies
People (migration and interaction)
Closing
7.) How did Ice-Age art (and art in general) reflect the cultural habits and practices of humans that lived during this period?
Cultural Habits?
Practices of humans?
Opening
Kinds of Art and Cultural Habbits
Kinds of Art and Practices of Humans
Closing
8.) How has the interpretation of the settlement and peopling of the New World changed, and what does this change reflect about the role contemporary and beliefs play in the shaping of history?
What was the original interpretation and how did it change?
What does this change reflect?
Opening
Changes in Interpretation
Reflection of Roles
Closing
9.) Why is the process of dating the peopling of the New World so difficult, and therefore, still unresolved?
What is the process, and what makes it difficult?
How is it unresolved?
I.Opening
II. Difficulties in the Process
III. Reasons for being unresolved
10.) What characteristics most defined those groups of humans that remained foragers, and how did those characteristics differ from other post-Ice-Age groups?
What were these groups, and what were their characteristics?
Differences?
I. Human Evolution
A. Homo habilis
1. “Handy”
2. Created and used stone hand axes.
3. Lived 2.5 mya
B. Homo erectus
1. Stood and walked upright
2. Carved flint into symmetrical shapes for use as tools, weapons
3. Lived 2.5 mya
C. Homo ergaster
1. “Workman”
2. Stacked bones of dead
3. Lived 800,000 years ago
D. Australopithecines
1. Lived earlier than genus homo
2. Before Lucy, were thought to be clearly subhuman
3. Lucy
a. Lived 3 mya
b. 3 feet tall, but bipedal and lived in family
E. Homo neanderthalensis
1. First discovered in Neander Valley in Germany
2. Died out 30,000 years ago
3. Coexisted with Homo sapiens for 100,000 years
4. As big as sapiens with larger brain
5. Had human-like traits
a. Cared for old and sick
b. Buried dead—suggestion of religion
F. Homo floresiensis
1. Discovered in Indonesia in 2004
2. Small brains and bodies, but with evidence of tool making
3. Lived 18,000 years ago
II. Out of Africa
A. African Eve
1. Last common ancestor
2. Lived 150,000 years ago
3. One of about 20,000 Homo sapiens living at the time
B. Migration
1. Humans began to migrate out of Africa about 100,000 years ago
a. Went to many different climates that forced adaptation
b. Arrived in Middle East 100,000 years ago
c. Colony failed, but was reestablished 60,000 years ago
d. In China 67,000 years ago
e. Arrived in Australia 50,000 years ago
f. Arrived in North America 15,000 years ago
I. Migration, Population, and Social change
A. Migration: Changed size, organization of groups, people’s views of the world, and interaction with surrounding species.
1. Moved on foot and lived by foraging.
2. Children were unsuitable for foraging life due to mothers’ lack of ability to carry more than one or two infants at once.
3. Migrants limited their families to make traveling easier. (Methods mentioned under population)
B. Population: Regulation of who can mate with whom.
1. Main contraceptive method is a long period of lactation. (Breast feeding keeps woman relatively infertile)
2. Also Food shortages, ecological disasters, plague, and war.
3. Cooking with fire helped migrants digest food better because of humans’ short guts, weak jaws, blunt teeth, and one stomach. There were wider ranges of food was major evolutionary advantage.
4. Paleoanthropologist R. Wrangham argued the evolving shape of hominid teeth (blunter, and smaller) is a result of the use of food modified by flames. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Abbe Henri Breuil said the humans back then “knew the use of fire.”
5. New and improved technologies improved diet, and hunting skills.
6. Warfare was thought to have been evolution implanting aggressive and violent instincts in humans, and by romantics an invention. First evidence of large-scale warfare was the battle at Jebel Sahab. Similar warfare conflicts amongst the chimpanzees.
C. Social Change: Men have enhanced roles in societies of enhanced violence
1. Human males along with other primates are bigger and stronger than female primates. Women; however, are considered more valuable due to their bodily cycles and rhythms.
2. Theories of male domination in societies are the competitiveness and the desire to command control of elementary of resources. Another theory is male dominance thought of being the consequence of hunting.
3. Men did hunting women gathered.
II. The Last Great Ice Age
A. Homo Sapiens experienced the most convulsive period of climatic change.
1. Every 100,000 years or so there is a distortion in Earth’s orbit. The great cooling began 150,000 years ago.
- 2. Europe was tundra, and there was steppe that was on the shores of the Mediterranean.
- 3. Warming began 18,000 yrs. ago. Melting ice and cooling seas began due to the warming. Thus our world map.
III. Ice-Age Hunters- Hunters enjoyed the edge of the ice. Hunters seek animal fat for a good energy source.
- New technologies such as bow and arrows helped kill, arctic hares, and horses, mammoths, elephants, deer. Climate change also killed these animals.
- Artwork shows of a fat female. Fat was beautiful.
- Ice age communities consumed about 5 pounds of food a day. Fruits were starchy grains, fruit, wild tubers, and meat.
- Ice-Age affluence. People could observe nature. The Flinstones.
- Map light blue is extent of ice cover 20,000 yrs. ago Germany, Russia, Sweden. Purple is tundras in Eurasia. Steppes in Spain and through the Himalayas
I. Ice Age Arta. Prehistoric art was found in caves in North Spain, southwest France, Great Britain, Ukraine, and the Ural Mountains between Europe and Asia. The art was mostly paintings, especially of animals, but also sculptures, carvings, and other forms of art.
b. Ice Age art was used for magic rituals and told stories. It is also a belief that the art was used to track prey because artists of the Ice Age made images of hoof shapes, tracks, habits of season, dung, and desired food of the animals they ate.
c. The artists who painted animal portraits were practiced from learning through generations of skilled painters. They used palettes mixed with red, brown, and yellow ochre.
II. Ice Age Culture and Society
a. Globalization, where cultural elements were alike everywhere in the inhabited world, was last practiced during the Ice Age era. For example, people used similar types of technology for hunting and gathering, ate similar food, possibly practiced similar religions, and enjoyed similar material culture.
b. Material culture is the concrete objects humans make. Archeologists and historians can infer what people’s religious, political, natural and societal attitudes or values were like based on food, clothing, and home decorations. For example, mammoth hunters built dome- shaped homes from mammoth bones. Communites had less than 100 people because daily activities went on inside these dwellings.
c. Historians can find information about Ice Age people’s symbolic systems, magic, and social and political units based on realistic drawings, numeric marks, and calendars with crescents and circles like those of the phases of the moon. Carvings and paintings show important people in animal masks who were possibly shamans talking with the dead or gods.
d. Red ochre was used in burials and possibly as body paint. It was also for magic. Leaders in society were distinguished from boyhood (maybe birth) because of elaborate ornamentaion of bodies of prominent figures at burials.
e. Feasts were most likely for alliances and strengthening communities to become more powerful.
III. Peopling the New World
a. Hunters crossed a link no longer existent between North America and Asia and spread over the hemisphere hunting and sometimes causing extinction of the abundant game. The Clovis people were the American pioneers.
b. With widespread evidence and with a broad range of cultural diversity, it is a conclusion of some historians that colonists came at different points in history and brought other cultures.
c. The American hemisphere was lived in around 13,000 B.C.E. when glaciers covered most of North America. When the New World was populated remains in question because archaeologists have found evidence in not only the eastern United States but also in southern Chile that is estimated to be 12,500 years old. It could have taken thousands of years to get to Chile, so historians wonder when people first came to the New World.
IV. Survival of the Foragers
a. The Inuit from North America made a soapstone lamp full of blubber 4,000 years ago which enabled them to follow game past the tundra. Foragers lived in new environments such as deciduous forests, areas with lakes, prairies and even tropical forests when the climate changed. Some foraging groups lived in the desert where they had to make collaborative networks (people married outside their community and provided hospitality to visitors) and orally transmitted science (people provided information about their habitat in order to survive in it.)
b. San or Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa gather vegetation such as tubers with water and cacti and hunt game to get water. They are persistent when hunting game because of invested emotion through the generations.
V. In Perspective: After the Ice
a. After the Ice Age, people chose farming or herding over foraging. Although most people chose a new way of life, some such as the Inuit still live according to tradition.
Chapter Chronology
ID Terms
1. Evolution
According to Merriam-Webster, is “a process of continuous change from a lower, simpler, or worse to a higher, more complex, or better state.” Evolution is key to understanding the roots of the human race because it perfectly illustrates the idea that there is no set time when humans came into existence, rather that we were constantly undergoing evolution to become the race we recognize as human beings today. In addition to the idea of our roots, evolution helps us understand the world more clearly because our race has encountered and adapted to it for over 100,000 years.
2. Anthropology
The theology dealing with the origin, nature, and destiny of human beings, has a sub group called paleoanthropology, the branch of anthropology dealing with fossil humanoids. The study of fossils has helped us understand our species’ history by allowing us to see the structures of species very close to ours from 100,00 to 6,000,000 years ago. Paleoanthropology reinforces the idea that humankind has evolved from creatures millions of years ago and didn’t just appear.
3. Lucy
Discovered by the archaeologist Dan Johansen in 1974, is an australopithecine (”southern ape-like creature”) that has been dead for over 3,000,000 years. Although she was only about three feet tall, Lucy and the rest of her species exhibited traits that were thought to be unique to a later species of Homo. Lucy walked on two legs and lived in a family setting. Tools thought to be 2.5 million years old were also found at the site of Lucy’s discovery. Footprints from 3.7 years ago were found a year later. Lucy’s discovery has a historical relevance similar to that of evolution and paleoanthropology, which is the inevitable truth that humans have ancestors millions of years old and have been, and will be, constantly evolving.
4) Homo Sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals)
Homo sapiens is the scientific term for the species to which contemporary humans belong, translating to mean “wise human.” The neanderthal is a humanlike species, evidence for whose existence was found in the Neander River valley in northern Germany. It disappeared from the evolutionary record around 30,000 years ago. There are many similarities between the species both at the physical and in the level of intelligence. They followed the same hunting and foraging patterns, they made the same tools our ancestors made, and lived in the same kind of society, with similar customs and rites. Because of Neanderthals, the line between what is considered human and what is not has become exceedingly blurred. MA
5) Homo Sapiens‘ migrations and peopling of the world
Paleo-anthropological evidence first places Homo Sapiens in East Africa at around 150,000 years ago. From there it took the early humans around 50,000 years to move out of Africa and into West Asia, but these early settlements failed. Homo Sapiens pushed on peopling what is now modern day China about 60,000 years ago. 67,000 years ago, humans returned to West Asia. Australia was conquered by Homo Sapiens around 50,000, surprisingly enough, before Europe which was populated 10,000 years later. As the Americas are the least accessible landmasses from Africa, they were colonized a mere 15,000 years ago. MA
6) Human migration and population boom –> key factors?
The reasons behind the population boom and migration of Homo Sapiens are complex subjects, but you can probably boil it down to a few key factors that set these events off. Having the ability to control fire gave early Homo Sapiens control over the grazing of animals and, therefore, a basic control over their food supply. They were able to improve their hunting, using fire-hardened spears, which improved their diet. Using fire to cook increased the digestibility of food, increasing the range of edible foods. All of these examples are important factors in the growth of the population. You must look at the issue of human migration from a different angle. Migrations tend to be forced on a population, and new problems have likely been introduced into the population’s environment causing them to want to move away. War, diseases, or natural disasters are the likely culprits. Food shortages are another good example, but this does not fit with the idea that the population increased during the migration
7. War- natural human tendency or cultural invention?
Armesto provides both sides viewpoints (natural tendency and cultural invention) on war in the textbook. Armesto seems to support the idea of war as a cultural invention. He seems to put it down as a result of ‘male dominance’ in ape societies, and relating this to humans (since our societies are related in this way). Armesto argues that this male dominance occurred because of the way the hunters (the males) would distribute meat they had taken in the hunts. This can be considered as a cultural development.
8. Venus of Willendorf and Venus of Laussel
The Venus of Willendorf is a carving of a plump female created 30,000 years ago, named for the place in Germany where it was found. The Venus of Laussel is very similar. It too depicts a plump female, and was created more than 20,000 years ago. It was found in France. Both of these carvings show that Ice Age peoples held body fat in high esteem. It shows that they enjoyed revelry and that women had an involvement in ’sacred activity.’ They also show that there were accomplished artists during this time period.
9. Ice Age affluence
This is a term Armesto uses to describe the abundance of game and other food, and the long hours of leisure time that people in the Ice Age enjoyed. These things allowed them to really observe and think about nature. This allowed their art and culture to flourish.
10. Material Culture –> insights it provides into Ice-Age society and culture?
Armesto defines material culture as “concrete objects people create.” These material items help people to “make informed inferences,” for example, we can use items left behind to determine what people ate, what they believed, and how they lived their day to day lives. Items left behind are not the only way to determine how people lived, but symbols and art are also helpful. Drawings and paintings on caves show traditions, rituals, and even calendars from 30,000 years ago.
11. Ice-Age Religious Belief System/Shaman
A shaman, according to Amesto, is “someone who acts as an intermediary between humans and spirits or gods.” Groups could designate elites in their societies to communicate with the dead or gods. This person was able to connect those on earth to spirits and could also communicate with an animal by disguising as that certain animal. The shamans held power and respect in groups and were crucial to the Ice-Age people’s way of life.
12. Foraging Peoples (e.g. San/Bushmen)
The San or Bushmen have inhabited southern Africa’s Kalahari Desert for about 14,000 years. These people have practically lived the same way since their first occupancy. There is little water there, so they rely on tubers and cacti for liquid and “30 percent of their sustenance.” They also hunt game on foot for a complete day, and can “run for twelve miles without stopping.” This is how the San or Bushman have lived for thousands of years and Armesto puts it that “as difficult as it may be for use to understand, the San would find it heart-wrenching to change a way of life for the mere sake of efficiency, convenience, or material gain.”
Critical Question Breakdowns
Critical Questions Breakdown
Ch. 1
1.) What methods or approaches do paleo-anthropologists and anthropologists use that differ from those of historians?
- Intro
- Approaches historians use
- Approaches anthropologists use
- Identify points of comparison such as tools used, time periods they study etc.
- Synthesize response structure around points of comparison
2.) What are the fundamental differences and overlaps between Homo Sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis?
- Intro
- Characteristics of Homo Sapiens
- Characteristics of Homo neanderthalensis
- Talk about similarities and differences in diet, vocals, and lifestyle etc.
- Conclusion
3.) How does the disagreement/debate over what ancestors do or do not constitute fully “human” reveal contemporary attitudes and rifts?
- Intro
- Identify ancestors that were humanlike according to historians
- Identify ancestors that were not humanlike according to historians
- Identify points of disagreement
- How does this reveal contemporary attitudes and drifts
- Conclusion
4.) How does the tension and deep-seated conflict created over the issue of evolution reveal some of the methodological rifts between history and other disciplines?
- Intro
- State in general the theory of evolution
- Say why this topic brings about conflict
- How does this conflict reveal faults between history and other disciplines
- Conclusion
5.) How does Fernández-Armesto’s description of humans throughout the chapter (e.g on p. 9 “In this environment…”particular kind of habitat”; p. 14 “Creatures like us…”) reflect a different treatment and tone toward humans than the one typically found in history texts (and popular culture)?
- Intro
- State in general the typical tone towards humans in other texts and why this is so common
- State Armesto’s view of humans
- Provide insight as to why Armesto describes humans like this
- Conclusion
6.) What drove the great human migrations and how did this great migration of Homo Sapiens change the way in which human societies expanded, interacted with one another, and defined gender roles?
What was the great human migration?
How were societies and people affected?
How did they interact?
What were the defined gender roles?
7.) How did Ice-Age art (and art in general) reflect the cultural habits and practices of humans that lived during this period?
Cultural Habits?
Practices of humans?
8.) How has the interpretation of the settlement and peopling of the New World changed, and what does this change reflect about the role contemporary and beliefs play in the shaping of history?
What was the original interpretation and how did it change?
What does this change reflect?
9.) Why is the process of dating the peopling of the New World so difficult, and therefore, still unresolved?
What is the process, and what makes it difficult?
How is it unresolved?
I.Opening
II. Difficulties in the Process
III. Reasons for being unresolved
10.) What characteristics most defined those groups of humans that remained foragers, and how did those characteristics differ from other post-Ice-Age groups?
What were these groups, and what were their characteristics?
Differences?